nsciousness. The specialist is the
cosmic conscious one, the one who "catches a glimpse of his destiny."

Balzac, in company with all who attain cosmic consciousness, had a great
capacity for suffering; and this soul-loneliness became crystalized into
spiritual wisdom, which he expressed in the words and in the manner most
likely to be accepted by the world.

How else can that divine union to which we are heirs and for which we are
either blindly, consciously, or supra-consciously, striving, be described
and exploited without danger of defilement and degeneracy, save and except
by the phrase "unity with God"?

All mystics have found it necessary to veil the "secret of secrets," lest
the unworthy (because _unready_) defile it with his gaze, even as the
sinful devotee prostrates himself hiding his face, while the priest raises
the chalice containing the holy eucharist in the ceremony of the mass.

CHAPTER XIV

ILLUMINATION AS EXPRESSED IN THE POETICAL TEMPERAMENT

Poetry is the natural language of cosmic consciousness. "The music of the
spheres" is a literal expression, as all who have ever _glimpsed_ the
beauties of the spiritual realms will testify.

"Poets are the trumpets which sing to battle. Poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world," said Shelley.

Not that all poets are aware, in their mortal consciousness, of their
divine mission, or of their spiritual glimpses.

The outer mind, the mortal or carnal mind--that part of our organism whose
office it is to take care of the physical body, for its preservation and
its well-being, may be so dominant as, to hold in bondage the _atman_, but
it can not utterly silence its voice.

Thus the true poet is also a seer; a prophet; a spiritually-conscious
being, for such time, or during such phases of inspiration, as he becomes
imbued with the spirit of poetry.

A person who writes rhymes is not necessarily a poet. So, too, there are
poets who do not express their inspirations according to the rules of metre
and syntax.

Between that which Balzac tabulated as the "abstractive" type of human
evolvement and that which is fully cosmic in consciousness, there are many
and diverse degrees of the higher faculties; but the poet always expresses
some one of these degrees of the higher consciousness; indeed some poets
are of that versatile nature that they run the entire gamut of the
emotional nature, now descending to the ordinary normal consciousness whi